Answering the prayers of most of the folks in attendance, Miikka Kiprusoff departed after 40 minutes.

The Calgary Flames goalie had been in the midst of a dandy performance, one of his many at Joe Louis Arena. But a lower-body injury cut short his night.Meaning Leland Irving — with the Flames leading the dangerous Detroit Red Wings 3-1 — needed to hop into action for his first appearance of the National Hockey League campaign. There are certainly better places to knock off the rust.

But Irving — heroically (and perfectly) handling six pucks — preserved the triumph, 4-1 as it turned out. That's the good news.

The bad news is Kiprusoff's status.

The workhorse has appeared in 70 or more games in every season since the 2004-05 lockout.

"You take for granted how durable he is," Jarome Iginla said of Kiprusoff, "and how good he is, how consistent he is. He's pretty much in the net most of the time."

Now what happens Thursday in Columbus?

Besides Irving and Kiprusoff, the Flames have zero goalies under NHL contract in North America. They're in a bit of a pickle.

Irving said the Flames bench knew Kiprusoff was ailing in the second period. (He'd been knocked over by Johan Franzen.)

"I could see that Kip wasn't feeling great," said Irving. "He was favouring, uh, his lower body."

Then, at the intermission, he got word — he was going in.

After a couple of uneventful minutes, Jordin Tootoo corralled a puck in Flames territory and darted a backhander towards the far side. Irving, calmly, blockered it aside.

That, it goes without saying, helped.

"I know Tootoo from skating with him (in Kelowna) in the summer," said Irving, smiling. "He skated by later and asked if I should have let him have that one. But it's good to get a shot early on. It was one of those saves where you had to be patient."

The Flames did buckle down in front of Irving. Which, they say, had been the plan no matter who was in net.

And Irving, in his eighth career appearance, never flinched.

"He handled it real well," said Dennis Wideman. "Every day in practice, he's working really hard. Obviously in training camp, he had that one day that he stood on his head (and won the backup job from the since-departed Henrik Karlsson). We had no worries with him coming in.

"He did a great job and, hopefully, Kipper's not too bad."

Kiprusoff allowed one goal on 20 shots — a power-play conversion by Franzen.

And No. 34's health is now the story, overshadowing plenty of other Calgary plot lines, including:

* Iginla's first goal.He opened the scoring at 3:24, steering a loose puck (off an Alex Tanguay shot) through the pads of Jimmy Howard.

"It was nice to see it go in," said Iginla. "Howard save the first one and it was just sitting there. Then I dug at it. Fortunately, it went in."

Iginla also earned a penalty shot, but Howard snuffed it out.

* The power-play roll.Curtis Glencross scored the 2-0 goal (on a fantastic feed from Michael Cammalleri) in the first period and Mark Giordano authored the 4-1 goal (on a screaming slapper) late in the third.

The Flames have already registered eight man-advantage goals.

"If you're not scoring, you want to try to create some momentum and create chances," said Wideman, who, in the second period, drained an even-strength marker. "I think as long as we continue to work hard and move the puck, we'll at least . . . get going in the right direction."

Irving's wonderful relief work comes in the middle of an oddball winter for the 2006 first-rounder.

Relegated to third-string duty in Abbotsford, he came to Calgary and snatched the backup job — then sat. (The Flames had been the very last NHL team to deploy a second goalie.)

Now this.

He declined to make a big deal of it, though.

"This is 20 minutes of hockey," said Irving. "In those 20 minutes, our guys played great. I can't take too much credit for this."

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Bittersweet win for Flames: Two points but they lose workhorse goalie Kiprusoff